Like baptism, the Church - and rightly - places great emphasis on the importance of marriage, but how does the spirit world view it? Silver Birch gave his opinion when addressing Vernon Moore, a circle member and his fiancée, Frances, who for many years took down the guide’s words in shorthand so they could be recorded, printed and sent out all over the world.
“I want you both to realize that you begin now the greatest adventure of all, for two lives that have pursued separate courses are now come together to begin a united life,�? the guide began. “Even as love has brought you to this place, even as love emanating from a world higher than yours guided your footsteps on paths of knowledge and truth, so has that same power brought you two together. Soon ‘a man of God’ will read a few words from a book and, according to your world of matter, you will be joined in the bonds of holy matrimony. But I say to you there are no bonds unless you bind one another with love and affection. There are no ties unless you wish to tie one another with love and affection.�?
“Do not think only in terms of two sharing one life from the physical aspect. Remember that you are two spiritual beings, both portions of the Great Spirit, now coming together with pledges to cherish, to love and to serve one another even as a great love from this world strives to serve you both. Remember that you are uniting two souls to adventure together and that we look not so much upon the material aspect by the spiritual, which to us is the enduring reality.�?
“Do not expect that you will escape occasional sadness and sorrow, difficulty, trial and test, for these are parts of your evolution. When they arise, as arise they inevitably must, face them with honesty and know that they help to quicken your character and to bring you closer together. There are many here who look forward with joy to a celebration which will duplicate the one you have in your church, but which will be sanctified in our world by ties we regard as more enduring, for the promises uttered audibly by word of mouth are as nothing compared with the unspoken pledges of the soul.�?
“You are richly blessed, for you have knowledge. I wish you, on behalf of many here who stand beside me, a safe journey through life’s seas, happiness and joy abounding, but always ask you to remember that you continue to serve with the added fortification of love around you in the earthly world. Look up, not down, and realize that your strength cometh from above and from within your beings. Fortified by that knowledge, face the future knowing that all will be well and that where love dwells no harm can befall you. And I pray that the blessing of the Great Spirit rest with you and inspire you always in all aspects for your new life, and that you both shall forever be conscious of the love that is round and about you.�?
The couple were members of Silver Birch’s circle until 1981 when his medium passed on. Frequently the guide spoke of the natural law. Once Vernon, a former Methodist missionary, asked, “How are we to learn from natural law?�?
�?You learn through the evolution of your own spirit�? replied the guide. “You learn first of all to discard all that which is false, all that which makes your reason revolt, all that which is not in consonance with the love and the wisdom of the Great Spirit.
Before you learn, you must unlearn. You must discard all that which hinders your minds from thinking as they should. Thus your soul and your spirit grow and you are ready for higher knowledge.
When you meet here, your soul is developing and you are becoming more accessible to the infinite wisdom of the Great Spirit. You are learning about the operation of laws that control spiritual phenomena.
You are being taught about the operation of natural laws in relationship to the life that you live. As you fit yourself by progress so greater knowledge comes to you.�?
�?I, whom you call Silver Birch, represent only a small portion of the knowledge that belongs to the infinity of the spheres. As you grow, other teachers greater than I can use me to impart knowledge and wisdom to you.�?
�?To save the world, must we broadcast this teaching to everybody?�? asked Vernon.
�?To save the world?�? questioned Silver Birch. “The world must learn to perform its own salvation. There is no ready-made plan. There is no prepared, cut-and-dried system.
Your world has to learn that, behind what it regards as the manifestation of life, there is the eternal reality of the spirit, that the children of matter are not only worldly beings but spiritual beings expressing themselves through bodies of matter.
The bodies of matter must be as perfect as they can be made through having all the necessities of life freely at their disposal, as the Great Spirit would have them.
Then their spirits must be freed from all dogmatic and creedal trammels, so that they do not give allegiance to things that have no real or spiritual value, so that they work only for that which is true, so that the warring and the quarrelling and the strife over creeds and dogmas, which have held your world in chains for thousands of years, can be abolished.
We preach the gospel of the spiritual brotherhood of all peoples, with the Great White Spirit as the common Father.
What stands in the way is the earthly conception, the churches built on error, the usurping of privilege, the pride and the power of tyrants, petty tyrants who hold the whip hand.�?
When someone said “Thank you,�? Silver Birch, as usual, reminded those gathered that he must not be thanked, but that it was the Great Spirit to whom gratitude should be expressed.“We use the earth phrase out of habit,�? someone explained.
“I know my son,�? replied the guide. “But if I did not always correct you and always draw attention to the laws of the Great Spirit, some would begin to pay us praise and to worship us, and then the same troubles would start once more.�?
